- cross-posted to:
- technology@beehaw.org
- cross-posted to:
- technology@beehaw.org
We’ve created an updated version of Beeper Mini that fixes an issue that caused messages not to be sent or received. We even added in a few new feature improvements: chats now open at the last unread message, and we polished the video player a bit!
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How long do you think it’ll be back for this time? I’d consider trying it again after I finish a very important life event soon. Right now I can’t afford to have messages going to a black box though.
Why not use regular text or email? Is it just about green vs blue bubbles? I’ve never understood why anyone thinks this is important.
I guess you aren’t living in the US either.
The iPhone is extremely popular over there, especially amongst teens the market share is over 80%. Also, because of cheap SMS and MMS people actually continued to use SMS while e.g. most of the EU quickly switched to internet messengers.
At the same internet messengers started to appear, Apple released iMessage which is a internet messenger with an SMS/MMS fallback for chatting with non-iMessage devices. This experience is worse for many reasons, notably the terrible 500KB media size limit makes videos unwatchable.
Additionally, MMS group chats are a thing in the US. This means a single non-iMessage device in a group makes the experience worse for everyone.
This lead to most people using their pre-installed messaging app, which is a worse experience on Android (SMS) than on Apple (actually modern messenger). It’s not an issue in other countries because people are accustomed to instantly installing WhatsApp on their new device.
Edit: As a teen, I didn’t even know MMS could do groups because ten years ago it would’ve been prohibitively expensive anyway.
Important to note that all of this is intentional by Apple. They intentionally degrade the experience when a non-Apple device is involved.
Which is why they broke this product last time, and why they’ll break it again.
Craig Federighi, Apple’s Senior Vice President of Software Engineering and the executive in charge of iOS, went as far as to say that “iMessage on Android would simply serve to remove [an] obstacle to iPhone families giving their kids Android phones.”
The documents show that in 2016, an unnamed Apple employee wrote in an email that “the #1 most difficult [reason] to leave the Apple universe app is iMessage… iMessage amounts to serious lock-in,” to which Phil Schiller, an Apple executive in charge of the App Store, responded that “moving iMessage to Android will hurt us more than help us, this email illustrates why.”
Android (SMS) than on Apple (actually modern messenger)
This hasn’t been true for years. Android has had full RCS support built into the default Messages app (and all major Android manufacturer third party apps also support it). RCS includes every major feature iMessage feature that differentiated it from SMS, but Apple refuses to implement it on iOS because that removes their iMessage monopoly.
You’re right, except the missing e2e encryption and lack of proper carrier implementations RCS seems pretty great. Hopefully with Apple adopting RCS they’ll push for a proper e2e spec, but I won’t hold my breath to have e2e with anything except Google Messages.
A bit off-topic: My other complaint about RCS is missing open source implementations. The only client available on all devices is Google’s Messages and even that doesn’t work without Google Services.
Also many carriers don’t implement RCS themselves, and instead use Google’s server [1]. This is bad since Google has access to all messages (and probably governments too, similar to recent news about push messages).
Why use RCS with Google Messages through Google servers over WhatsApp? I’m just frustrated about the state of messaging.Broad support across all countries is a big advantage.[1] https://9to5google.com/2023/03/27/vodafone-rcs-messages-android/
This experience is worse for many reasons, notably the terrible 500KB media size limit makes videos unwatchable.
I am trying to figure out why I want videos in my chat. Just link it. It is weird that media size if limited by carrier, not mms itself. So that is a pain, where the range (again depending on carrier) is say 3 megabytes to 500KB. Artificial limitations and inconsistency is annoying.
In any case I have Apple and Android, I have family with a mix of both as well, and I do not get all the whining. Messages work, group chats work, images work. so Meh. No big deal. Even with family in Africa, the UK, and the US.
I am trying to figure out why I want videos in my chat. Just link it.
Sometimes I want to send a private video which isn’t publicly available, so there’s no link to send. E.g. a video of a relative’s performance.
Since they are auto backed up to my server, or icloud, or google drive, or whatever the person is using, we just link to there. Not public of course. I get that you save a step of course.
IDC about the colors, but being able to respond to individual messages within a conversation, being able to edit, and seeing which images a friend responded to is a nice to have. Android does all this stuff too, but until this Beeper app, neither phone OS played nice with the other. So that’s why it’s nice to have over regular SMS. As for regular email for an ongoing group conversation between friends? What is this, 1999? :P Email is not a good format for instant messaging like text messages are.
Hmm ok. Yeah I’m used to IRC for group chats and I thought there were some hipster counterparts like Matrix that I hadn’t tried. I didn’t realize iMessage wasn’t just SMS with blue bubbles. I still don’t understand what it has vs the bazillion other chat apps out there but I guess it’s a Steve Jobs thing. Thanks.
People need to agree to download and use the same app, which they don’t want to do in my experience.
What it has is that it’s the default app on phones and people are lazy to install another one.
It’s not about lazy, it’s about getting a group of people to agree to download and use the same app, which is harder than it should be.
This US problem with iMessage always sounds so bizarre to me
I don’t see why it’s bizarre. Apple worked hard on getting their devices into people’s hands and created an ecosystem to keep people buying their devices again in the future.
Besides, it’s no different from any other countries dependancy on other messaging applications, like WhatsApp!
WhatsApp is universally available, not locked down by the dominating platform’s own proprietor.
No but a large portion of the world uses WhatsApp. Personally, since it became a Meta application I want to move away from it. Doing so though is not easily done without mass adoption. You’re highly dependent on your other contacts.
I was hoping RCS will be the next best thing. But I won’t be holding my breath.
True.
But the point is the lock-in is similar from a social perspective, just hardened even further by tying the messaging platform to specific hardware.
“Hey let’s use XYZ instead of iMessage” and “hey let’s use XYZ instead of WhatsApp” will be met with the same typical resistance to any sort of change. But in the case of iMessage, there’s added elitism and othering due to Apple’s using iMessage as a lock-in to their hardware.
I think the big difference in the US is that iMessage was leagues ahead of SMS well before there were any good, popular 3rd party mobile messaging apps. iPhones also dominated here, and still do, largely due to that early market dominance.
Yeah but like at least WhatsApp works, apple chooses to suck for half the population
Only one thing is abundantly clear: you don’t want your communications in the clutches of Big Tech.
The ultimate power move for Apple would be to require an iCloud+ subscription to use this service.
Yay?
is it using the iMessage servers again, or is it still talking to iMessage directly?
They claim this one talks to Apple’s servers directly without proxy and therefore does E2EE.
See https://blog.beeper.com/p/how-beeper-mini-works
They do claim to use a custom-built proxy for push notifications (Apple’s push notifications obviously won’t work on Android) but that’s a helluvalot less critical than a message content proxy.
Given their previous behaviour, I’ll only believe that when an independent security researcher confirms that the app’s code actually implements the iMessage protocol with E2EE as they claim.
There was a very recent project that reversed enginered iMessage which I assume they are using as reference.
If you’re talking about that one by the high school student, they actually bought that from him.
In terms of helluvalot less critical - is it really though? Remember that the app on your phone is also witten by them, closed source and does whatever they want with your clear-text messages. If the trustworthyness of a messaging vendor is part of the critical-ness question, e2e encryption does not add anything: Either you trust them and could also do so when they process your message on their server, or your don’t and they could indeed spy on you on the proprietary client app.
End 2 end encryption is only a real benefit when the ends actually belong to the user, i.e. theres transparency about the ends being clean, which can only be shown for open source ends. If the ends are potentially compromised, there’s so security / privacy guarantee.
It’s still taking to iMessage directly, but now you need an Apple account, your iMessage account won’t be associated with a phone number.
They also have a different app called Beeper Cloud that uses a relay Mac somewhere in a data center.
Not a relay Mac, see the post you linked.
Note: Beeper Cloud’s new Oct 2023 iMessage bridge never used Mac relay servers and still does not today. It uses a similar method to Beeper Mini, but runs on a cloud server.
I’m in the US but am not a teen, so the idea of sending videos by text messages never occurred to me. Thanks for the explanation. I have been satisfied with SMS but I guess video continues to be the fungus that eventually destroys every data transport medium, heh.
